Author of 'The Alien Eve' and the Blog 'Waiting to write: Writing and the art of procrastination'

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In the eternal battle of character versus plot, I reckon no one wins. Why? Both of them are vital to a novel, and have to be developed together, because without either of them a story falls, meanders without reason.

Plot or situation forms and shapes the character and, equally, a character, their personality and background, will interact and think from their point of view to and about the situation and actions happening around them.

Three examples from my own work:
My first novel ‘The 13th Vision’ I focussed on plot with some development of my characters and the novel’s downfall? A too complicated main plot and too many subplots. And two parallel plot lines, one of which was not as well developed as it could be. I like the initial premise though so I’m working on a re-write.

My second novel ‘The Alien Woman’ – two fully formed characters Eve and Ben came out of this one and the novel was written from two POV’s. The plot? As before I got carried away with complications but when I finalised the decisions of how many subplots to use, the novel came together.

My third novel is ‘Things To Fear’ – The situation was formed in my mind and I worked with a character journal for a few days to get to know my character and then got straight into writing a first draft. This character came easily and whenever I get stuck on a scene, it’s usually because I’m fighting against going with what the character would do.

A bit about my character ‘Eve’ from ‘The Alien Woman’.

Who ‘Eve’ is and where she comes from is central to the story of ‘The Alien Woman’. This novel is set in present day and in a fictional south-east of Ireland.‘Run. Learn.’
With two commands pulsing though her head, a woman is on the run at night in a strange cold world. She enters an empty shelter.
When he gets home, Ben finds her and lets her stay the rest of the night. By morning, he’s surprised at how fast her injuries are healing and lets her to stay in the house when she prepares to run again.
‘Eve’, as he calls her, doesn’t know where she is or how she got to this world. All she has are the commands coming into her mind. She doesn’t mind Ben calling her ‘Eve’, the last time she heard her own name was by the ones she loved and has lost. A new name may help her forget her past.

‘The Alien Woman’ is going through the submission process at the moment.

A big thanks to Andrea of ‘Harvesting Hecate’ for writing about me in her post about the character in her novel ‘The skin of a selkie’. Her post was part of a series in a ‘Meet my character Blog Tour’.

Here is the first writer I’d love to tell you about, J.C. Conway.

J.C. Conway
J.C. writes science-fiction, romance and fantasy stories for adults, young adults and middle-grade readers. He says on his bio, ‘I’m a fan of great fiction that stretches the imagination, probes the depths of the human condition, or otherwise illuminates the unknown or the misunderstood’. He’s a prolific short story writer and his debut novel, ‘Hearts in Ruin’, a contemporary romance, was published in May 2014 by Liquid Silver Books. His blog posts delve into a variety of subjects; science in space and archaeology, information on science fiction awards and events, and information for romance writers, among some of them.

I’ll feature other authors over time but for today, I’m going to pass the baton forward and I hope you’ll go over and visit J.C.’s blog.